Do Angels Have Emotions?

Do angels have emotions?
Can they love or
seethe with fury?
What about reget?
And do they ever get annoyed?

Do angels cry out indignant?
Or suffer over loss?
Do they go for lamenting
or wing-to-wing hatred?
Is this one full-on loving
and that one all but frost?

Do they gaze upon us from up there
when we shift from neutral to atomic?
Do they check their specs exclaiming:
“Were it not so sad they’d be comic.”?

Which leaves me with one last question;
and no it’s not, “Is this all real?”
No, this is what I wonder:
Is it heaven
or hell
to feel?

Debra B. Darvick

photo courtesy of Debra B. Darvick, snapped on my 60th birthday

It took me quite a while to realize this truth: having expectations brings about a lot of suffering. We humans expect events to go a certain way. We invest in our expectations as if they were actual currency.  We expect results to align with our own well-being: people must respond correctly;  results must reflect our efforts and intentions; our loved ones may not disappoint us. Life makes mincemeat of our expectations. That mincemeat can become our personal soil for inner growth if we allow it.

Nowadays I strive to exchange expectation for curiousity, for a let’s-wait-and-see-attitude that leaves me open to outcomes I never could have imagined. That’s the goal, anyway. Doesn’t mean life won’t whack me again. It will. Or that I won’t rail and protest. I will, albeit for less time and with less self-righteous enthusiasm. In the pauses and cadences between whatever fresh hell  awaits ’round the corner, I can truly live in the present. I loosen my grip on expectation’s reins and simply enjoy the ride.

I’ve been listening to a seven-episosde podcast hosted by Krista Tippett. Tippett created a series she calls the Hope Portal,  “adventures in opening the deep enduring teaching that lives inside the 20 years of On Being. [The NPR radio show Tippett hosted for twenty years.”] In addition to each episode, listeners have access to downloadable journaling prompts, suggestions for group study and conversation and the invitation to recall the people and events in your life that have filled you with hope.

Last night, Episode 7, began with an interview with poet/essayist Ross Gay whose “The Book of Delights” began as a quest to find something to delight in every day for a year. After we listened to the interview, our group discussed the challenge of feeling joy in today’s world. I wrote down this phrase: “Adult joy knows suffering lies nearby.” Does the world’s suffering preclude experiencing joy?  Are we in the habit of seeking out delight? Can we simultaneously hold delight and the knowledge of nearby suffering within our hearts?

Delphiniums fills me with delight. Ditto the way my husband can make me laugh at the most inane things. Or the way squirrels chase one another around a tree trunk squawking and chittering as the scramble ever higher. Recalling these things in my mind’s eye doesn’t overcome my sorrow and fury over Sunday’s murder of Australian Jews celebrating the first night of Chanukah. It doesn’t chase away the agony of parents eager to embrace their college kids home for winter break. Reaching for delight simply reminds me that life isn’t all or nothing. Life is always and forever lived somewhere between despair and hope, between unfathomable grief and the kind of joy that sends your spirit soaring.

So what’s your delight? Share it with us. Let’s pool some delight during these dark days, knowing that brighter times lie nearby.

I cannot remember where I read this nor which culture it was attributed to. The people being described viewed the past before them and the future behind. The logic being they could see the past because they had experienced it. The future had not yet arrived and thus it was invisible. On the contrary, we are oriented to leave the past in the past. It’s over. The future lies ahead. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” is a standard conversation opener with kindergarteners. We are raised to envision the future and move toward it all the while moving away from the past. Thus, for years, the concept that the past lay ahead and the future behind confounded me.

But no longer. There are now more years behind me than ahead of me. My memories are rich, vivid. I treasure so many and am at peace with, and even grateful for, many that at the time seared me. No one gets out unscathed. The perspective of age allows me to see my life’s threads connect past events with the events that followed (the past’s future if you will.). There is comfort in this.

I am definitely guilty of repeating stories from my past. My friends and I sometime preface a story with, “Stop me if I’ve told you this before.”  Sometimes even Olivia will interrupt with, “Oh, that was when Daddy…” if I repeat a story one time too many from her Elliot’s childhood. We share these recollections to secure ourselves in our loved ones’ memories, staking a place in  their future in some small way. Nearly 70 years down the pike I am finally grokking* that the future is out of my control. I can plan and G’d can laugh. I can prepare for the future.  Sometimes that preparation stands me in good stead and sometimes life tosses my plans aside like last week’s grocery list.

There is relief in releasing control. There is excitement as well. Quiet curiousity, too. These decades have taught me that life have in store gifts beyond imagining. Devastation can  give way to healing and growth. Given the inevitable, I’m happier with the future “behind me,” invisible and unknown. Past shmast, future shmuture. Trite but true: there is no place to be but the present. Only in the present can wisdom gained from  past experience be put in service of a more benevolent future. The present is the room, the only room, where life actually happens.

*coined in the 60’s by author Robert Heinlein, grok refers to understanding something intuitively or through an empathetic experience.

In May, I had the good fortune to spend a week hiking in Umbria with a very dear girlfriend.  We met when we were 14 and remained tight all through high school and some years beyond.  Life took us in different directions but our bond held, bolstered by yearly birthday calls, visits when I headed back south, and in recent years more frequent phone calls, texts and emails. We had a total blast. giggling, laughing, talking long into the night. Lots of deep listening, great wine, and delicious pastas. Re-entering our teen selves as the wise women we are today felt so solid. A total gift.

P.S.
Night had settled in by the time Karen and I walked back from dinner in town to the agriturismo where we were staying. Fireflies twinkled everywhere. We made a delightful observation: Italian fireflies blink at half-note speed. Blink-blink-blink-blink-blink!  It makes perfect sense. Italy is a felicitous, bubbly country. The people are warm and vibrant. To my ear, spoken Italian sounds like champagne. So why wouldn’t Umbria’s fireflies twinkle at a quicker pace than their whole-note American cousins who flicker  Blink. Blink.  Blink.  Blink. Blink.

photo: Debra Darvick

photo: the very cute waiter who brought us our Aperol spritzes

I’ve ceased multi-taksing.  Perhaps not completely, but gone are the days when I would divide, OK fracture, my attention to accomplish two or three things at once. Lately I’ve become aware that doing, or trying to do, more than one thing at a time takes me out of myself. Out of the present and onto a path paved with distraction and a wee bit of anxiety.

Maybe it’s age slowing me down. Or maybe I’ve realized that everything does not have to be done-at-once; much can wait until the next hour or even the next day.  If G’d forbid the next day doesn’t come, well then, someone else can fold the laundry.

Earlier in the fall a friend called just as I began my  winding-down-the-garden chores. We’d been playing phone tag; I didn’t want to send her to voicemail. So AirPods situated, iPhone in my pocket, the rake in my hands, I answered her call while I tackled the leaves. It was great to catch up and hear of her grandchildren’s latest escapades. After we rang off, I realized that I hadn’t noticed the crisp fall air or reveled in that particular shade of  intense indigo sky that graces us only in October. Had the sun been warming my back as I raked leaves toward the curb? Not a clue.

One of my fave Yiddish expressions is Mit ein hintn zitst men nit oif tsve ferd. You can’t ride two horses with one behind. For milennia philosophers have urged upon us this eternal truth. You can’t be in two places at once unless you’re a quark. I think. So for now, and this now, and this now, I strive to remain in the present, uni-tasking. One behind is enough for me.

greeting card image courtesy of Debra and Martin Darvick                                                                                                                                                                             

image of Ethel and Lucy courtesy of Getty Images